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Like any well-run operation, be it a Fortune 500 company, or in this case, your above-average screwed-up household, job delegation is required to keep things running in an orderly, or seemingly orderly, fashion. Everyone has to pull their own weight, do their chores; slackers are not tolerated.
Now, before you read on, I’m gonna warn ya’ that after discovering how helpful Mr. Craig is around the house, many of you are going to want to steal him. And frankly, I’m not going to deny it, he’s a gym. But before you make any rash decisions about claiming him for yourself, I’d like to remind you of the pothole, the plumbing, the Burger King during labor, and the molested by an elephant while hubby laughed his ass off blogs. My point is, with all his good qualities, he’s not without his faults.
Vile Substance Remover:
There was a time hubby tried to initiate the rule of, the person who sees it first, cleans it first. And by “it” I mean anything vile. However, some of you have read my book, Weddings Can Be Murder, which was a romance between a nervous puker and a sympathetic puker. You know how they say we write what we know. Well, I’m not either of those, but I have a terrible gag reflex. I come by it naturally. My daddy would lose his lunch if someone mixed up their mashed potatoes with their peas at the dinner table. Like my dad, the first glimpse of any vile substance, and double that if vile substance has an odor, my gag reflex kicks in.
My gag-impaired issue offers me instant reprieve from cleaning any vile substances. This includes: kitty boxes, hairball removal, and stomach flu clean up. Even cleaning the refrigerator, if said Tupperware bowl has taken up residence longer than it should have behind the milk jug. Junior, unfortunately, took after his mama and grandfather, and is gag-handicapped. Therefore, all vile substance removal is delegated to hubby. It’s not a job he’s particularly happy with, but one he takes upon himself with pride and a bottle of Lysol.
Cook:
I’ve never been territorial about my kitchen. If you wanna cook, you got my blessings. My problem exists when hubby and junior expect moi to eat the half-brained experimental thing they call dinner. Remember my gag reflex issue, guys?
Now, hubby, being a modern man and not afraid to let his feminine side come out to play, has even created a few recipes. One that he’s particularly proud of is his, Ketchuped Chicken. I’m sure he won’t mind me sharing his recipe. It’s rather simple. It’s ingredients include: Oil—lots of oil, chicken—cut up in various sizes to assure some will burn and some will remain raw, and ketchup—lots of ketchup. Preparing it is also fairly simply, heat lots of oil, toss in unevenly chopped chicken. When some pieces have burned sufficiently, while making sure some are still raw, add ketchup—lots of ketchup. The oil and ketchup sort of globs together to create an oily paste and hides all the evidence of the raw meat. Yum. (Remember my gag reflex?)
So needless to say, with exception to mama’s-on-a-deadline-cook-for-yourself nights, moi does most of the cooking.
Kitchen Cleaner:
Now, I’ll have to admit, this is where hubby’s talent really shines—well, right behind his vile substance removing skills. Mama cooks, daddy cleans. Wait, I do have a couple of issues. He claims he cleans the kitchen, I claim he puts the dishes in the dishwasher.
You see, it’s the oddest thing, the man can scoop poop, collect hairballs, and clean up any bodily functions left by our four cats, but he refuses, can not bring himself to touch a dish cloth—which he is certain, is full of germs. He will walk out of a kitchen, deem it clean, and there’ll be enough food on the stove and cabinets to feed another family of three.
So hubby and I share the kitchen cleaning duty.
Bad food detector:
Now, considering both my guys know about my gag weakness, bad food detecting should fall to someone else. But nope. It’s still, “smell this, taste that.” I mostly refuse to comply. Needless to say, there is another bad food detector related issue that is equally disturbing. It’s the ABC bad food detector. i.e. We all went out for dinner. All enjoyed shrimp. Later, one of my men come to me and say, “Ugg, I’m feeling really sick. Do you think it was the shrimp?”
Now, isn’t that a stupid question? If I had thought the shrimp was bad, do they think I’d have eaten it? And now that I know one of them thinks the shrimp was bad, it only makes sense that I’ll start waiting, expecting, and perhaps imagining bad shrimp roiling around in my stomach. (Remember my gag issue?) Ahh, but bad food detecting continues to be my job.
Clothes Checker and Sniffer:
Now, I’m not talking laundry here. Nope, laundry in the Craig house is every man for himself. Yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but my hubby and son do their own clothes. (I personally believe it is to keep me from blogging about the condition of their underwear.) I’ll even confess and tell you that my hubby, not son, is better about washing, drying and putting away than moi. Me, I’ll wash, I’ll dry, and that laundry basket can stay filled with clothes for a week—or until I wear them.
Nevertheless, duty of Clothes Checker and Sniffer is not laundry. This is where the man says, “Hey, smell this, is it still clean enough to wear?” Now, I personally think this is one of the huge differences in the genders and I think someone pointed this one out in my rule blog. But if a woman thinks there might even be a chance that an article of clothing smells, she will not adorn herself in such clothing. Now, my men, if their toes do not curl, if mama’s gag reflexes don’t act up when the piece of clothing is forcibly placed under my nose, then they proudly wear it.
The clothes “checking” part of this job is also allocated to moi. Now, I’ve been told by hubby that while it remains my job, I have not excelled in this duty. According to him, I have allowed him to go to work with holes in his shirt, buttons fastened unevenly, and the worse crime happened just a few weeks ago. He wore one black and one brown shoe to work.
In my defense, he leaves for work before I have sucked down my required five cups of cinnamon stick coffee. Needless to say, I’m working on improving on this duty.
Okay, I have loads more job allocations, from snake catcher and bug identifier, to fever checker, but I’ll save them for next week’s blog. But what about your guys? Who does what at your house? What household chore do you hate? Love? Come on, share a little.
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